The Writer’s Brain

This week I have been working on my brain. I felt like I had hit a mental brick wall that I now know is called writer’s resistance. I have been reading a book called Around The Writer’s Block that is based on neuroscience. Have you ever sat down to write and had a sudden urge to clean the house, check your e-mail or anything else to avoid actually writing. Yep, I’m guilty. Turns out that this is not uncommon. This very phenomenon keeps a great number of people from fulfilling their dreams of writing success. I have started coloring in adult coloring books which is not something that I ever saw myself doing. No. I am not trying to recapture my childhood. This is supposed to take the limbic system of your brain, that takes over when you are stressed and put it in the backseat. You want the cortex in control. Tasks like coloring are supposed to achieve this. Plus, it is kind of fun. I have also started doing morning pages. This consists of writing three pages when you first wake up of whatever is on your mind. You don’t worry about spelling, punctuation or even if it makes sense. It is very calming and liberating. After all of this experimentation, I have decided to write the last chapter of my book and then fill in the rest. I think that having a clear vision of where I’m going will help me to fill in the blanks in between. I have been chipping away at it using timed writing sessions. I set timer on my phone for 15 minutes and give myself permission to write total crap. It’s the getting started that is the hard part and this is helpful. If you tell yourself to sit down for an hour, then you might decide you don’t have time, but who doesn’t have 15 minutes. We all watch too much television anyway, right? Once I start though, I usually find that I keep going after the timer has gone off. You’d be surprised what you can do in fifteen minutes. That is how long it just took me to write this blog posting. Until next week, happy writing!